The use of digital escape rooms in nursing education

Negative attitudes and prejudices towards people with a mental disorder are common across cultures and societies. The stigma associated with mental illness leads to a lower quality of life, given the discrimination and social exclusion suffered by people with this type of disorder. In the field of health, research has shown that doctors and nurses also manifest these types of stigmatizing behaviors and attitudes. The present study aims to create and apply an educational escape room for the purpose of training nursing students in mental health, promoting positive attitudes towards people who have a mental disorder. To do so, a pre-post study was conducted with an experimental group and a control group to determine whether the escape room was effective for the modification of stigmatizing behaviors compared to transmissive lecture class, and a third measurement was made at 6 months only to the experimental group to evaluate whether the changes produced by the escape room were maintained in the long term. The results indicate that the students participating in the study obtained better scores in sensitization and these remain better over time. It is concluded that the escape room used is suitable for the training and sensitization of future nursing professionals in the field of mental health, facilitating the learning of knowledge and positive attitudes towards severe mental disorder. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-022-03879-6.